What could be considered as “natural” - already established customs, only reasonable customs or politically desirable customs? 115 We have several times referred to the fact that Folke Schmidt placed the breakthrough of “the modern thinking about contract law” in 1878, when Alfred Ossian Winroth published his treatise on the “Master-Servant relationship”.116Winroth was later to become professor of private law, and he is regarded as having received many influences from BernhardWindscheid, one of the representatives of the German “Pandectist” school during the latter part of the 19th century. In this part iii we will pay closer attention to Schmidt’s legal historiography. BeforeWinroth began to speak, the “most common” opinion among scholars, according to Schmidt, was to categorise the master-servant relationship as a branch of family law. Fredrik Schrevelius (1799-1865) appeared as the most prominent Swedish advocate of this school. He became professor of private law and Roman law and wrote a textbook which was published in several editions after 1844. Schrevelius’ opinion about the master-servant relationship emanated from one of the founding fathers of the historical school, the German professor Friedrich Carl von Savigny. Folke Schmidt in his book on the “service contract” (Sw.Tjänsteavtalet, 1959) stressed two important starting points forWinroth’s pioneering contribution for leaving this tradition. First, the rights and obligations of the master-servant relationship were based upon a notion of the two contracting parties as autonomous persons. Second, the parties’ principal claims on each other had their origin in the parties’“free right of determination”. Schmidt also referred to Winroth’s opinion that the “free service contract” had emerged alongside the contracts that were formally regulated either by the Statute on Hired Servants of 1833 (Sw. Legohjonsstadgan) or the Statute on Freedom of Trade of 1864 (Näringsfrihetsförordningen). In such cases, the courts had decided c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 63 115 Björne 1998, pp. 299-311. 116 “Winroth representerar genombrottet för den moderna kontraktsrättsliga uppfattningen”. Schmidt, F 1959, p. 13 with reference toWinroth 1878.
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